The General Services Administration opened up bids to manage its vendor verification system — which ascribes a unique identifying number to each contractor doing business with the government — with the release of a request for proposals Aug. 31.
The Data Universal Numbering Systems, or DUNS number, has been the government standard for identifying contractors, non-profits and other organizations doing business with the federal government since 1962 and became an official part of the Federal Acquisition Regulation in 1998.
“The DUNS number is not just a number—it is a system for maintaining accurate, comprehensive and timely information—and it is issued rapidly and free of charge for all entities wanting to do business with the U.S. federal government,” according to the website for Dun and Bradstreet, the vendor that has managed the system since its inception and for which the number is named.
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The agency issued a request for proposals Friday (Aug. 31, 2018) seeking an identifier and unique numbering system for its Integrated Award Environment and System for Award Management to validate that companies or other organizations that do business with the government are who they say they are.
Doing so could disrupt the monopoly Dun & Bradstreet has on the identification numbers contractors use to work with the federal government. But if the public and federal government want to better understand where money goes, they’re going to need to use a common identification system, the report from records giant Lexis Nexis and the Data Foundation, a government-transparency focused advocacy group, argued.
But some transparency advocates consider the step insufficient.
The agency released a request for information on Feb. 13, 2017 in advance of the possible adoption of a new numbering system for “government-wide entity identification and validation services.”
